


Broken Glass: Part Nine – Reflecting Light

by motsureru



Series: Broken Glass [9]
Category: Heroes - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon, Awkwardness, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Law Enforcement, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-08-16
Updated: 2007-08-16
Packaged: 2017-11-11 16:25:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/480503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/motsureru/pseuds/motsureru
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spoilers for all of Season 1. This is a continuation after Season 1, Sylar/Mohinder-centric.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Broken Glass: Part Nine – Reflecting Light

**Teaser:** _Preston_ _took several steps inside, tilting his head back as he looked up at the wall of clocks staring back at him; a sea of faces, some dead and some still ticking by in the immortality of time._

_  
_

 

.9 Reflecting Light

 

 

            Silence was the best cure for disagreement. After Sylar’s outburst the night before, for which Mohinder felt completely responsible, the majority of that evening had been spent without speaking. The following morning, too, despite the fact that Mohinder found Sylar making them rather delicious green pepper and onion omelettes when he awoke, went by with only a few words here and there. On the days when Mohinder did not emerge at all from the apartment, left at the mercy of their odd and disconcerting relationship, he wore his clothing from India; he felt some sort of comfort in it, though that was a purely subconscious thought. He assumed there might be some sort of comment on it, but he found that from Sylar there was no criticism. No speaking. Hours passed with each in his own world. It was during this time and the time Mohinder spent discreetly observing Sylar read throughout the afternoon, that the scientist had found himself second-guessing what he was doing in all this.

            Teaching Sylar humanity? How was he doing that by using the man as a live-in cook and buying him clothing? By ignoring him as much as possible and only speaking to him when he started a fight? Whether or not Mohinder had wanted to take on this deal, he was now a part of it. Serial killer or not, Mohinder could feel his mother’s words nagging in the back of his mind. He didn’t have to forgive the man, only help him. And so Mohinder felt he should finally make an effort. Feign niceness, if he had to. And why not? Sylar had done it to Mohinder as well.

            It began with small talk.

            “What are you reading?” Mohinder broke the silence.

            Sylar looked up from where he sat in the middle of the room and watched Mohinder rub a pale linen sleeve nervously. “…One of Chandra’s books on the modern synthesis of Darwin’s evolutionary theories into scientific thought on genetics,” the man replied, as if it were the most natural of answers. As if to say, ‘What _else_ would I be reading?’

            “…” Mohinder knew that Sylar was going through all the books in the house- more like devouring them three or four a day- but he hadn’t been aware of Sylar’s ability to actually understand and, well, _enjoy_ the content. “…Did you always find these things interesting, or was it only after you… found out? About being special,” Mohinder asked, nervously passing a pen between his fingers as he often did.

            The hesitation Sylar had in answering was a curious one. He wasn’t sure if Mohinder was trying to test him or simply chat. A hand reached up and rubbed the back of his dark hair. “…I read a lot before then. Science and medicine were just among the topics.”

            Mohinder raised his eyebrows in return. “Medicine?” Had Sylar let something personal slip? “Were you… a doctor? Or did you want to be one, I mean…” Mohinder’s words were laced with caution, his shoulders a little tight, but he seemed excited. He hated knowing that Sylar could hear his anxiousness and it only made him more anxious. Still, his boyish thrill at getting to know private things was unable to be helped. He tried to control his body’s reactions.

            “No,” Sylar replied almost immediately. His fingers shifted slowly, adjusting his grip on the pages of the book in his lap absently. Nervously? “-But a doctor’s a respectable profession. A- …lucrative… field, you know?” He shrugged one shoulder, eyes looking down to the carpet instead of at Mohinder. Conversation… he hadn’t had a real one since he was Zane Taylor. He hadn’t had a personal one since before he’d killed Chandra Suresh.

            “I wanted to be a doctor once,” Mohinder said unexpectedly, a smile ghosting the corner of his mouth and then slowly disappearing. “But… I’m no good with people. Sick people.”

            “Yeah, you weren’t very nice to me in the hospital,” Sylar quipped, a slightly teasing smile on his face when his brown eyes found Mohinder’s again.

            Mohinder breathed out half a laugh and let his gaze fall away. “…Guess not.”

            Silence fell, and hours passed. After the briefest snippets of conversation, they would say nothing, but the hush was no longer quite so arduous to endure. When tiny smiles dared to creep onto his face, Mohinder found himself thinking of Sylar in more of the way he thought of Zane once: strangely charming, even if he was not as disarming or engaging this time around.

Occasionally, Sylar would look up from his reading material to ask a question or two, to compare some prior knowledge to the text and see if Mohinder saw it the same way, or if Mohinder could explain an unknown point to him. It was strangely… comforting. Mohinder had not been the professor in a long time; at the start of this quest, he never really thought he would miss it. But now he found he enjoyed having his knowledge tested and acknowledged. He supposed it might have been the same for Sylar. Was the thought that they could be, in fact, _similar_ really such a frightening one?

“You know, you have nightmares at night.”

Sylar was the one to break the sparse conversation away from neutral topics of genetics several days later. He did so while making dinner, chopping up vegetables by hand over the counter, even though the angle was awkward. Mohinder thought his persistence in not using powers to do actual cooking preparation like cutting or washing had something to do with his habits from living on his own, or his strange appreciation for things culinary.

“Nightmares?” Mohinder echoed from his desk, looking up cautiously at the man.

“Yeah, nightmares. I hear you at night,” Sylar said casually, the cutting knife making a sharp noise against the wooden board beneath it. “You don’t sleep much lately. Even when you get away from your desk and sleep on the futon. Your heart’s always racing and you talk sometimes. Even shout,” he explained, a bowl sliding across the counter as his hands lifted the vegetables from the board and dumped them in.

Mohinder was very aware of his nightmares and they’d woken him many nights since Sylar was present; he simply hadn’t realized the man might wake from them too, thanks to his acute hearing. “…It must… be very easy to hear,” Mohinder said dumbly, avoiding the personal aspect to that comment.

Sylar glanced back towards Mohinder and then began to put his chicken out on the board too. “Yeah, well, your bedroom doors open to both the living room and the hallway. I can pretty much hear or see anything you do.”

Something about that answer was slightly annoying. Because of his hearing, Sylar didn’t _need_ normal access to both rooms to observe any of that, and it was obvious. Yet still, he pointed it out. Mohinder said nothing. Unfortunately, he didn’t need to.

“What do you dream about, Mohinder?”

Hesitating, Mohinder drew in an unhurried breath. Some degree of honesty had to be a part of this, didn’t it? It was the only way to hope for it in return. “…The past. The future. My fears. And my failures,” he replied vaguely.

Sylar did not look up from the meat he so carefully cut into cubes. “I see.”

“What do you dream of?” Mohinder suddenly asked back. When Mohinder addressed Sylar, he never said his name. Perhaps that was Mohinder’s way of not acknowledging who he was; of pretending he hadn’t accepted this man known as ‘Sylar’ in his home. The one he could now chat idly with was not Sylar. Could not be Sylar.

“I don’t,” Sylar answered, taking the chicken and spreading it out in a baking dish.

“…And what about nightmares?”

Sylar’s chair wheeled him over to the sink, where he washed his hands, height giving him a slight advantage in reaching the faucet. “I’ve already lived them. And I’ve killed them. I don’t fear them anymore,” he said simply, as if the problem had been discovered and fixed long ago.

_And who were they?_ Mohinder wondered, watching the man’s movements; natural, unconcerned… carefree?

Sylar wiped off his hands and began to look for a can in one of the cabinets. “You strike me as the kind of man who needs to learn how to exterminate the parts of himself that hold him back. Nightmares. You’d find out a lot more about yourself.”

Mohinder stared at Sylar, wondering what exactly he was learning now about him. “I think… that it isn’t about exterminating those parts of yourself you don’t like. I think it’s a matter of knowing how far to let them go… or knowing how deep to bury them.”

“You can’t bury them until they’re dead,” Sylar countered.

Mohinder tilted his head slightly, dissecting the pitch and tone of Sylar’s faintly agitated words. “Things buried alive survive for longer than you might think.”

“I hear your back cracking all day long too,” The subject was changed brusquely. Sylar poured his can of soup over the chicken pieces. “My chest is feeling fine, so, get some sleep in your own bed tonight.”

A dubious pause. “…Thank you.”

“Casserole will be done at seven.”

 

            Gray & Sons stood unimposing, the second shop settled in the bottom of a larger building, wedged between two rather busy food stores. It was quite easy to overlook, as it stood facing due west and probably never saw anything but shadows after sunrise and the building in front of it at sunset. The curving, florid black lettering on the glass seemed out of place next to the faded, antique clocks resting behind it. Something beautiful hiding the grime beneath, Preston thought as he unlocked the front door.

            According neighboring shops, the store was never that busy, and the man who ran it forgettable. No one knew when the ‘CLOSED’ sign had begun hanging in the door, but the owner from the deli next door noticed a few months back when the store owner stopped coming by at exactly 1:15 P.M. for his usual tuna sandwich on wheat.

            “Did you notice anything odd about him?” Murphy asked as Preston wrote in his notebook.

            “Yeah. Gabriel was weird,” said the corpulent owner of the shop. He was rough around the edges, but a real neighborhood guy; the sort that had seen it all and remembered every face on the block. “Never said much, always quiet. Harmless. He was like that as a kid too.” The man confirmed his own words with a nod of his head. “I’ve been here forty years next to Gray’s shop. Now Tom Gray, there was a good man! Always friendly, talkative, polite- even when that yap of a wife of his got noisy. His boy, Gabriel, never caused no trouble. Used to come in here all beat up, lookin’ for napkins and water when he was a kid- schoolmates roughed him up a little and he came right here I guess.”

            “Kids in the neighborhood bullied him a lot?” Preston asked, the thought of revenge-killing passing through his mind.

            “Sure, sure.” The man nodded. “Tom told me his kid had some trouble in the local schools back in Queens- they were a nice Catholic family, you know? So Tom rented a place here for a while so Gabriel could go to school in Brooklyn while Tom ran the shop instead. When Gabriel was in high school Tom came beamin’ around the block about how his son got a nice scholarship to some university. But when Tom had his heart attack… his son dropped it all to take over Tom’s business. Real good kid. Wish my own kid wanted the shop after his old man.” The owner chuckled and pat-patted his countertop with a thick hand.

            “What about Virginia Gray, the mother?” Murphy asked, casting a glance out the door like he might see some ghost of the past strolling in.

            The shop owner gave a slightly distasteful look and shrugged his shoulders. “Total basketcase. Real religious nut, that woman. Always had somethin’ to say about somethin’, never shut up. Nice enough lady, though. She was real concerned about her kid and always tellin’ him what to do and what not to do. Little Gabriel never gave up on her though, even if the only time I ever heard him raise his voice was at her. After Tom died, she got real sick; that’s why he took over the shop. If he wasn’t runnin’ the business to pay for her bills he was at home, takin’ care of her. Real good kid. Tough life. A man can get by being a little weird if his heart’s in the right place though, you know?”

            Preston felt his frown deepen. “Yeah… yeah I know. Thanks for your help.”

            When Preston and Murphy forced the heavy door to Gray & Sons open, they found that the air inside was heavier than Gabriel Gray’s apartment. This place had been left to stand for far longer. Preston took several steps inside, tilting his head back as he looked up at the wall of clocks staring back at him; a sea of faces, some dead and some still ticking by in the immortality of time. “Close the door, Chuck. Lock it again too,” Preston murmured.

            “We got a pretty good story so far, Preston.” his partner commented as he turned the bolt. “Guy stays with his dad as a kid, picked on all the time, overbearing mother he has to take care of… all the signs are there.”

            “Everything but motive,” Preston corrected, steps sounding heavy on the old oak boards beneath his feet. He walked a circle around one of the dusty display cases, peering down at the red velvet used in the presentation of antique clocks for sale; it was like the viewing of a dead aristocrat, an exhibition of the body, exquisite and prestigious.

            “The motive’s right there, Pres, in the details.”

            “Not if he killed before her. We can’t jump to conclusions, Murphy. We’ve seen plenty of other cases, family revenge killings… but if he killed someone else, weeks before, even, then it’s a completely different ballgame.” Preston walked carefully around one of the counters, towards an open doorway leading to the back workshop. “Hey Murph… think I’ve got something.”

            The click of Preston’s flashlight made Murphy pull his eyes away from a case of watches and follow the man back. “What is it?” he asked, taking out his own light.

            In the back room were the remnants of a man’s life, scattered in a collection of books and boxes, in furniture haphazardly tossed into the tiny space in the back of the shop. Preston and Murphy found themselves standing next to towers of these things, boxes overturned and spilling their contents, crammed into corners and shoved into every available space but then suddenly abandoned. It was like a tomb that had been sacked- no, the refuge of the thief, with nowhere to store his goods.

            “…These are all from his apartment, I bet,” Murphy said low, drawing his flashlight slowly over the dust-collecting ruins of Gabriel Gray’s life.

            Preston nodded. “He must have moved out of his apartment in a single night… thrown it all in the back of the shop as fast as he could and split town.” The detective stepped carefully over a pile of books, rounding the table towards a pile of loose ones spilling across metal watch repair tools. “ _Activating Evolution_ , by Chandra Suresh,” he read aloud, passing the book over to Murphy before he picked up another.

            “Advanced science? A watchmaker? And the waitress is practicing politics, right?” Murphy half-laughed, a smirk on his face. He opened the book and began to flip through. But when he got to the end, the smile faded. “Hey, hey Preston. I got an address.” He turned the book around and held it out to the man. There beside the publishing information sat a phone number and a hand-written address in black ink.

            “Chandra Suresh… that address is in Brooklyn.”

            A sudden flash like lightning shot through the room and both men looked up quickly.

            Preston was the first to step out of the back room and stare out the window- only to see a multitude of faces peering back as flashes from cameras began to go wild. Fists began knocking on the windows rapidly and mouths moved in the word ‘Detective!’ over and over again. “ _Dammit_ ,” he breathed out, turning to Murphy as the man joined him.

            “Oh, God…” Murphy sighed, running a hand through his dark hair and passing off the book to his partner. “Someone leaked the murder case to the press. Just what we need.”

            Preston turned his back to the window and sighed too. “No, it’s fine… This is as far as they’ve got. Nobody else has this address. We head back to Queens for today, get the precinct started on finding us that info on the two that brought the cops in on Gray’s Trenton Place address. Then we’ll lose the press tomorrow when we come back to Brooklyn to check out this Suresh guy.”

            “Yeah, alright. I got you, Pres.”

            Preston rubbed his chin, looking down at the book in his hands. “Let’s just hope if Gabriel Gray buried this guy… he didn’t bury him too deep.”


End file.
